Fitting a mixture of von Mises distributions in order to model data on wind direction in Peninsular Malaysia

A statistical distribution for describing wind direction provides information about the wind regime at a particular location. In addition, this information complements knowledge of wind speed, which allows researchers to draw some conclusions about the energy potential of wind and aids the development of efficient wind energy generation. This study focuses on modeling the frequency distribution of wind direction, including some characteristics of wind regime that cannot be represented by a unimodal distribution. To identify the most suitable model, a finite mixture of von Mises distributions were fitted to the average hourly wind direction data for nine wind stations located in Peninsular Malaysia. The data used were from the years 2000 to 2009. The suitability of each mixture distribution was judged based on the R-2 coefficient and the histogram plot with a density line. The results showed that the finite mixture of the von Mises distribution with H number of components was the best distribution to describe the wind direction distributions in Malaysia. In addition, the circular density plots of the suitable model clearly showed the most prominent directions of wind blows than the other directions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.